The City Electric

Over the last twenty years of neoliberal reform the power supply in Dar es Salaam Tanzania's metropolis has become less reliable even as its importance has increased. Though mobile phones televisions and refrigerators have flooded the city the electricity required to run these devices is still supplied by the socialist-era energy company Tanesco which is characterized by increased fees aging infrastructure and a sluggish bureaucracy. While some residents contemplate off-grid solutions others repair extend or tap into the state network with the assistance of freelance electricians or moonlighting utility employees. In <i>The City Electric</i> Michael Degani explores how electricity and its piracy has become a key site for urban Tanzanians to enact experience and debate their social contract with the state. Moving from the politics of generation contracts down to the street-level experience of blackouts and disconnection patrols he reveals the logics of infrastructural modification and their effects on everyday life. As politicians residents electricians and utility inspectors all redistribute flows of payment and power they reframe the energy grid both as a technical system and as an ongoing experiment in collective interdependence.